IO

For Leanne

O Etna, tear the sky with jagged glory!
Palermo – city, sleeping under boughs
of granite, wake unto a new submission;
the feeble hand that scratches intermission,
scrabbles slowly from your stinging palm.

Reflective alms still offer their perdition,
unto the weeping bells that toll at noon,
and nine; and in between –
                     each lonesome moment,
echoes in its place: Apollo climbs
diurnal grandeur past each ticking second
and    overtakes    the peak and renders small
all might and passion seeking to forsake him.

We, alone, worship; observeth all.

I

The Cantos of another age devour
these songs we conjure in the morning light;
the somber nocturnes strewn from clasp of night.
The dawn-sprung sun shines a deceptive twilight
through the windows of Palermo’s kin;
illuminating all wickedness where, within,
all men cower.

IO! IO! bask in effervescence!
The vespersong pulls at my fingertips –
to wake! to breathe! to let each waiting hour
convalesce within my aching palm.

The friezes covet smoke; each cornice whispers
for its ash in music’s void achieved -

II

and welcome home –
the wind has kept you safely
from the tides.

Pa – ler – mo

unveils its breast.
O eidolon, convert
your raging fire!

The heart   –     beat of the beast
bares its veins.

The minuet;
a page of Ital lore,
repairs itself

slightly, slowly:
each hammer echoes – echoes
as a lonesome moment
as each lonesome moment
through the ardored heart.

Each monu – I HATE USA – ment
carries custom meaning;
a poesy passed on by a mortal’s rage,
as writing drivel upon Dante’s page /

both glisten.

III

L’Arte • Rinnova • i • Popoli • e • Ne • Rivela • La • Vita

What more truth can there be?

                                                    I ask you –
     what have we lost that we cannot feel?
Where from these flowers, does the petal fall?
And to where does it float?

                                                  Will it wither –
                                                        or break?

Decrepitude envelops every straggling verse;
the street-posts shine as wholly as the street –
the gutter shimmers
                                  is this place complete?

The badge spells something
                                       that we cannot read –
how can we heed what man can’t comprehend?

IO! IO!

Across our hearts are
                                  pendula, swinging EGO
                               to
                                  the
                        clouds.

IO, the answer, and …
                                      IO, the question.

    What happens
                            when pen –
                        du
                            la
                        stop?

IV

O, heart –
                 Roar! O Muse –
                                          tremble!
for barbs and bells must travel hand in hand,
and questions answers –
                                        and lions with lambs.

IO – heart throbs at its greatest pounding!
IO – life leaks from a grinning sieve,
               
                                                  yet, IO, smile
                                        for the wayward passing
                                of the pendulum; it spirals
                            deftly through its path –
                       its fingers grasping
        yet no handhold grant the grasping hand!

Allow its passing;
                           grips were made for breaking –

O, monument, created for defacing.
O, virgin; made for infinite defiling!
                                                     let it pass,
                                        for only hearts soar true.

IO! Heart! Muse and – O, dear Palermo,
                  all were made to fall,
        in turn; create: a beauty
    beyond novelty and children –
        incunabula have not the answer,
            only questions feigning
                as the answer,

masquerading warmth as their solution –

                                                     IO!
in each curvature am my own beauty,
    wind-torn, wave-swept
        as the wasted city: Palermo,
decadence distilled to horror.
                   
                                               Etna, Etna
                                    sing your sordid song!

One day, you too will fall to dormant ruin,
    how long then, until you find
                                                  your grandeur?
Tell me! From whence does every petal fall?
And why? And when did every Muse
                                                     start failing?

    Etna, Etna –
free your fury now!
                              Or are you, like me,
                              trapped in your
                              own questions? IO!
vexes me and I command
no part (of me) as freely as the world does
                                                              freely.

V

O, Etna,
where, my fool, do we find glory
in an epoch of unceasing decay:
in machinations and contrivations –
the loss of all the poets once ordained
                                   as Muse; as God?

Where is there unclaimed beauty?
Where, among us, will the petal fall?
   O, Etna – tell…
                           where does the petal fall?
                                                              IO…